Jahadi White and I took our turns drafting our top players who played in a Wizards uniform.
Jahadi White and I celebrated our 300th episode of the Bleav in Wizards podcast yesterday so we thought we’d have a little fun with it and do a draft of the top players to ever play for the Wizards. Plus, it’s that part of the offseason where there’s not that much else to talk about. Originally, we decided to include everyone to ever play for the franchise but most of the best players in franchise history played for the team long before I was even born.
In order to have a more productive conversation, we decided to constrain our lists to exclude anyone who didn’t play for the franchise once they changed the name to Wizards. The franchise’s most successful seasons came under the Bullets name so the list would naturally have been filled with Wes Unseld, Elvin Hayes, and so on. It becomes a lot harder to build a strong team when you just consider the guys in recent memory. We also left off anyone still actively playing, hence Bradley Beal’s exclusion.
From there, we went position by position and took turns with who got the first pick at each position. With the first choice of point guards, I selected John Wall. Jahadi took his former teammate Rod Strickland.
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At shooting guard, Jahadi took his other former teammate Michael Jordan. I got a little creative with my positions and decided to take Gilbert Arenas as my shooting guard. Arenas once said on our podcast he preferred to share the ball-handling duties with another guard like Larry Hughes so I’d feel comfortable asking him to be off-ball more on my team.
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For his small forward, Jahadi took Antawn Jamison, the only player he drafted who wasn’t one of his former teammates. Although, he did say that Jamison is someone he would have liked to play with during his career. I opted to take Jamison’s former teammate Caron Butler.
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With my choice of power forwards, Chris Webber seemed like a no-brainer choice for me. If it had been his pick, Jahadi also would have taken Webber here but he was still happy to take his next power forward on the board, Juwan Howard.
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At center, I wanted someone who could set some hard screens for my guards and help control the defensive boards so I took Marcin Gortat. Jahadi pulled an ultimate flex with his pick and selected himself as the center. I can’t even be mad at it because I would have done the same thing in his position. I also think it would be fun to see him and Gortat battling for rebounds.
We also decided to each take one bench player of any position to be able to sub into the game. Jahadi kept his theme going and selected his former teammate Richard “Rip” Hamilton. I wanted to add a little toughness to my team so I went with Jerry Stackhouse.
If anyone is particularly adept at NBA 2K and can simulate this hypothetical matchup, please let us know who would win. Otherwise, let us know in the comments who you think has the better team or who you would have drafted instead given the stipulations we put on the available player pool.
Jahadi’s final team:
PG: Rod Strickland
SG: Michael Jordan
SF: Antawn Jamison
PF: Juwan Howard
C: Jahadi White
Sub: Rip Hamilton
My final team:
PG: John Wall
SG: Gilbert Arenas
SF: Caron Butler
PF: Chris Webber
C: Marcin Gortat
Sub: Jerry Stackhouse
During the episode, we also talked about the Wizards addition of Leaky Black, Kira Lewis Jr., and Jaylen Nowell on Exhibit 10 contracts, as first reported by Josh Robbins of The Athletic. Plus, we weighed in on some recent controversial comments from former Wizards Nick Young and Gilbert Arenas about the lack of competition stars from previous generations competed against. And thank you to anyone who has supported the podcast over the first 300 episodes!